215 quotes
Dear and most respected bookcase! I welcome your existence, which has for over one hundred years been devoted to the radiant ideals of goodness and justice.
The Cherry Orchard (1904)
There is not a single criterion which can serve as the measure of the non-existent, of the non-human.
Note-Book of Anton Chekhov (1921)
The more simply we look at ticklish questions, the more placid will be our lives and relationships.
The person who wants nothing, hopes for nothing, and fears nothing can never be an artist.
There are plenty of good people, but only a very, very few are precise and disciplined.
Everything is good in due measure and strong sensations know not measure.
Man will only become better when you make him see what he is like.
Note-Book of Anton Chekhov (1921)
There are no small number of people in this world who, solitary by nature, always try to go back into their shell like a hermit crab or a snail.
The Man in a Case (1898)
Dear, sweet, unforgettable childhood! Why does this irrevocable time, forever departed, seem brighter, more festive and richer than it actually was?
The Bishop (1902)
"Crutch is coming! Crutch! The old horseradish."
In the Ravine (1900)
One can prove or refute anything at all with words. Soon people will perfect language technology to such an extent that they’ll be proving with mathematical precision that twice two is seven.
Lights (1888)
Execution kills instantly, life-imprisonment kills by degrees. Who is the more humane executioner, one who kills you in a few seconds or one who draws the life out of you incessantly, for years?
The Bet (1889)
I think that it would be less difficult to live eternally than to be deprived of sleep throughout life.
When performing an autopsy, even the most inveterate spiritualist would have to question where the soul is.
An expansive life, one not constrained by four walls, requires as well an expansive pocket.
The wealthy man is not he who has money, but he who has the means to live in the luxurious state of early spring.
I don’t understand anything about the ballet; all I know is that during the intervals the ballerinas stink like horses.
There are in life such confluences of circumstances that render the reproach that we are not Voltaires most inopportune.
We live not in order to eat, but in order not to know what we feel like eating.
The Fruits of Long Meditations (1884)
Without a knowledge of languages you feel as if you don’t have a passport.